About Justin Westbrook

Justin is married and has two sons plus one daughter. He spent his childhood locked in a room with his NES and his AD&D manuals, when he wasn't out chasing chickens. He spends a great deal of time now trying to sound smarter than he really is.

Boy, howdy! Did that video of a father shooting up his daughter’s laptop for mouthing off on Facebook get around the internet quickly or what? It almost happened so quick we didn’t see the point in covering it outside of the 24-hour meme-cycle of the internet. But we did want to go ahead and put it up on 8BitDad.com for those of you who have either been doing something productive with the last day or so, or those of you who deeply rely on our expert fatherly opinions (trust us, we’re a doctor…well, one of us is).

First a little background. The video you are about to see is of the father of a teenage girl named “Hannah.” Recently, Hannah put her parents on blast, using Facebook to vent three paragraphs of her teenage frustrations about chores. She was able to conceal the post from her parents using Facebook security settings, but Hannah’s father discovered the post during some expensive “software upgrades” that he performed on her laptop. With a lot of agitation, Hannah’s father reads the post aloud on video, and then shoots up Hannah’s laptop with his .45 pistol. He promises to post the video on Hannah’s Facebook immediately before grounding her for the rest of her childhood.

Right now, I mean RIGHT NOW, I’m giving parents everywhere yuletide leverage over their naughty kids! Well, I’m not giving it to you, but I am going to clue you in to an awesome site that will let you create a personalized video message from Santa Clause for your kids. For 2011, Portable North Pole will let you create a message for free-ninety-free (and that’s pretty cheap!).

Here’s the really fun part. In the skit, Santa Clause greets your child in his warm jolly way, and offers to check with his special machine that helps him keep track which children have been nice, and which have been naughty. When you customize your message, you get to choose whether to put your kiddo on the nice list or the naughty list.

Now if this alone were the only feature, it would be a cool video, but there are a lot of other options that Portable North Pole offers to parents so they can have a really neat opportunity to send their kids a special message.Read More

I came across this story today about a military father is able to connect with his daughter using pre-recorded videos of himself reading stories for his little girl. It reminded me of my promise to explore this issue in the Daddies Away! feature here at 8BD. I didn’t really have an immediate chance to begin writing this feature right away since I’ve been gone, ironically because of difficulties in getting connected with internet. Also, some of the other mainstream methods of communication that are sparse or simply lacking in Afghanistan.

It touched my heart to watch this daddy reading to his daughter, and it obviously made me think about my own weirdos back home. I’ve finally been able to be regularly in touch with them, but there are still times when connecting is troublesome. It becomes really important to be able to find a variety of means of communication, so you can stay in good contact with your children while away.

I’ve prepared a list of different methods of communication, direct and indirect, that are viable whether you are deployed 7,000 miles away on the other side of the world, or just taking a weekend trip to the mid-west on business to review the new Chevy Traverse. You can use any of these methods to stay in touch. Check it out after the jump…Read More

A quick Veterans Day post to deliver our props to America’s military fathers, who can be away from their families for more than a year at a time while deployed overseas. I thought I’d put some videos together from around the net, but mostly from a special blog called Welcome Home Blog, where they aggregate videos of military homecomings and surprise visits.

I think it’s easy to be grateful to the troops, who sometimes have to put in on the line while defending American interests, but I think some special recognition needs to be given to the children and families of these veterans. You see, while a soldier takes an oath and willingly goes into harm’s way, their families (spouses, children, parents) don’t take any oath, and they must make sacrifices too.

So let’s celebrate the military family today, at the same time as we celebrate the military family men. Roll the clips!